


and the rest of our lives

by dykefilm



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Reunion, Softness, but also angst i'm sorry, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23311486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykefilm/pseuds/dykefilm
Summary: sequel to 218 Hours; the Serquel reunion, the aftermath, the great farewell.
Relationships: Raquel Murillo/Professor | Sergio Marquina
Comments: 16
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

She didn’t know where they were going exactly. Every few minutes, Tokyo would offer a reassuring phrase like ‘not long now’ or ‘almost there’ but she had no idea when they would get there really. The rest of the time, she listened as Tokyo told her every detail of the plan they’d made for her escape and considered every detail. She was too distracted to pay attention to the road signs and she knew it would only make her more anxious.

When Tokyo parked on the side of a narrow street, Raquel felt like she was about to vomit. She looked at Tokyo for confirmation and received an eager smile as Tokyo got out of the car and quickly wiped down her seat before throwing the packet to Raquel.

“It’s a ten-minute walk from here,” she said and somehow they made it in half the time. The anxious pace Raquel kept drove them through the streets and she might have been annoyed if she couldn’t sympathise with what Raquel had gone through these past weeks. She _knew_ what it had felt like to get Rio back, she was surprised Raquel didn’t break into a sprint.

Denver answered the door and almost got knocked over by a very antsy Raquel as she ran into the open space of the entrance hall and straight into Sergio’s arms. She buried her face in the coarse fabric of his jacket and knew there was nothing more precious in the world than that feeling.

“ _Mi amor,_ ” Sergio mumbled against her hair. “ _Estas segura ahora. Te tengo ahora._ ”

In his tight hold, she let herself collapse for the first time since she’d left his side. She ached with days of feigned strength; for hours she had sat upright and not let Alicia see her weaken, and even when she had started to portray her fragility, it had been so regimented that it felt harder still.

Raquel had never known such relief. She began to relax and loose her hold on him but still, he held her tighter like he was afraid he’d lose her if she left his grasp. It was the most precious she had ever felt to him: there in the entrance hall of a safe house after days apart.

“ _Cari_ _ño_ _,_ ” she whispered against him and waited until he released her to arms' length. “ _Nunca pensé que te volvería a ver._ ”

It felt like they were in a world of their own. She had forgotten for a brief time about the people watching her, for in her mind, there was space only for him. Soon, they would return to reality but she was savouring this divine moment, trying to lock it away somewhere so that she would never lose it.

The moment eventually came that they relaxed. Raquel wrapped Stockholm up in a hug and found herself more grateful for the woman that she ever had before. She greeted Denver with a handshake and a wink, thanking him for keeping The Professor from storming her cell and breaking her out with brute force.

Meeting Rio was a bizarre experience. Over time, she had built trust with the others and made them believe she was no longer a cop, but he knew her only as the Inspector who had almost ruined the original heist. His trauma made him hostile to her but she refused to take it personally; if by some miracle, she had won over Tokyo after such a long time, Rio was not a source of concern. Very soon, they would go their separate ways and never see each other again, she could bear a couple of days of hostility.

It felt strange, the group of them all together in one place. It was Nairobi’s absence, and Helsinki’s. It made no sense, a group of people such as they with nothing drawing them together anymore. The heist was over and soon they all would be strangers once again.

Time to recuperate wasn’t a blessing they could truly be afforded until they were off Spanish soil and so, though Sergio insisted on sitting right beside her the entire time, Lisbon was welcomed into the _final_ meeting of the team.

They decided that they would wait eight hours for Helsinki and if they hadn’t heard from him by then, they would leave. After seven hours and twelve minutes of staring at the tracker logs and waiting for the phone to ring, there was a brisk knock on the front door.

“Could they have found us so quickly? We left no trace. This town has no cameras, they must be knocking on every single door trying to find us,” Stockholm insisted.

The CCTV they had temporarily installed showed a figure at the doorway, dressed head to toe in black and surveying the area impatiently. Raquel armed herself and went to open the door, she was tired of running away from them. She wasn’t frightened so long as she had Sergio at her side.

“WOAH!”

Helsinki had survived.She had a gun pointing at his skull and it took her a moment to process what she was seeing, but she clipped the safety and threw her arms around his neck. It had been in the back of her mind since they had left him and she had worried that the loss of him might be the tipping point for her, but he had survived.

The plane was but a couple of miles south of the town and so they walked it. Three different routes to the same field where they would make their great escape. As they said goodbye to Spain for the last time, they wondered what would come of their beloved nation. A revolution had been started in their name and still, it raged on.

“Come and sit with me,” Sergio invited as he headed to the cockpit of the tiny plane and prepared for the homestretch.

Less than two hours later, they were in Tunisia. Forty-eight hours to make their farewells and their lives would begin again.


	2. Chapter 2

The beach was beautiful and the food was divine. They got takeout and sat in the sand and drank cheap red wine that tasted like fruit juice. If the world had ended right there, they all might have been in part satisfied after having known the joy of that moment.

“So, what’s everyone going to do with their cut?” Rio asked with a smile. He knew there was no money in it for him, he had been the fool that got himself caught and meant they all had to enter into such a risky enterprise as the heist.

“No information about our futures or our whereabouts. If I have to explain that to _you,_ Rio, I’ll put you on the first plane back to Madrid.” Everybody chuckled at that for a moment but when the scene stilled, Tokyo began talking.

“There’s nobody I trust more in the world than you six. If I can’t tell you what I’m going to do with all my money then who can I tell.” There was a pregnant silence that followed. ‘I’m going to get drunk every day for the rest of my life, and I’m going to take up yoga. I’ll live in the middle of nowhere and I’ll learn a dead language and I’ll go years without ever speaking to anybody. That’s what I want to do with my fortune.” 

Rio was looking at her curiously. What had passed between them was not yet dead and yet the cinders would be stomped out by the many miles put between them.

They each went around the circle and told of the wildest hopes and dreams as elusively as they could. By the time, they had gotten to The Professor, everybody was a little tipsy aside from him. He took a moment to absorb the luxury of that time together with food and wine and evening sun.

“All I’ve wanted for a long time now is to be with the woman I love and the family that we’ve built. The rest is up to her.”

Everyone groaned at once and Raquel chuckled sweetly at the lot of them, reaching to set her hand on Sergio’s knee. Stockholm wolf-whistled and Helsinki made a joke about what knee-touches lead to.

It was hard to imagine leaving all of it behind. Sergio could think of nothing better than flying Marivi and Paula here and living by the beach for the rest of their days. It broke his heart that no such thing could happen. Two more nights would have to do.

He watched as Raquel laughed and wondered how she had returned to her true self so easily. It wasn’t for good, of that much, he was certain. For hours they sat there and were ushered away only by the tide.

Sergio was a tender lover that night. Too tender by Raquel’s measure, when all she craved was to feel alive and to feel human for the first time in days. He treated her like she was made of glass and while she felt blessed to have a man so sweet as him, she ached for more.

“ _Quiero que me cojas.”_ For one incredible moment, she believed she would get what she needed. He straddled her legs and looked more in love with her than she’d even seen him in her whole life, but he stopped still and made no move even to kiss her for a long moment.

 _“Mi amor, que pasa?”_ No matter how long she had lived with him and loved him, understanding him was something else entirely. At times he proved impossible to read, she only knew his mind was stirring with thoughts she could assuage.

 _“_ I should have protected you, Raquel. I should never have let you take that risk. I should never have let you lie for me,” Sergio trailed off in self-pity and remorse which she had no interest in. 

His position on top of her was compromised as she shoved him, carefully enough, to his side of the bed. It was the first time in their entire relationship that they’d argued in bed. It was the one place in the world where they both felt certain that no conflict could be had between them and yet, they had to be proved wrong.

“Let me? I didn’t realise I needed your permission to do my job? Am I not capable anymore, Sergio?” The duvet came up around her shoulders and covered her modesty as she drew back from him.

“That’s not what I’m saying, Raquel. I’m saying that you’d be better off without me. All I could think about from the moment I heard that gunshot was how I wished I’d never offered you my phone charger that day in Hanoi. Wouldn’t you be so much happier if I’d never come into your life?”

Raquel looked at him like he had just threatened to kill her. Shock paralysed her for a moment as she gave him a chance, a split second chance, that he missed.

“ _Que mierda, Sergio. Que mierda!_ ”

She was out of the bed before he could stop her, pulling her robe around herself and heading for the door. “I’m going to sleep in Tokyo’s room.”

The door slammed so loudly, he wondered if it wouldn’t wake the entire house up. He didn’t care. He refused to make a scene. He wasn’t Denver. He wasn’t foolish enough to start a fight with Raquel Murillo.

He knew what he had said. He knew it from the moment that the words had come out of his mouth but he wouldn’t try to apologise yet. The last thing she needed was another argument. He’d give her time. _That’s what she needed._

Sergio didn’t sleep a wink. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Was she sleeping soundly or were her thoughts as scrambled as his? It made his head spin just considering how close she was to him and yet nowhere near close enough.


	3. Chapter 3

She didn’t realise what she’d said until she was out of the door. It had been her only option in the current circumstance and she wasn’t going to sleep next to him after he’d proved to be such an idiot.

Shyly, she knocked on Tokyo’s door only to have it open immediately at the noise. Tokyo looked surprised to see her. Who had she been expecting so late at night? Rio, perhaps?

Tokyo invited her in and shut the door without questioning her. It was strange to Raquel how she could so quickly make a place seem like it was her own. They’d had no time to decorate and yet the warm light filling the big open space seemed to have been built for her.

“When I heard a door slam. I was expecting Stockholm,” Tokyo admitted awkwardly, sitting at the bed’s end. “I didn’t think the two of you ever fought?”

“We never really have. We’ve squabbled like an old marriedcouple and we’ve joked about it afterwards but he’s never really hurt my feelings before now.” It felt bizarre to admit it to someone she knew so little. The catharsis of admitting that their perfect life had a crack in was unparalleled.

Tokyo reached for a half-empty wine bottle on the floor and passed it to Raquel. Gratefully, she took a swig and let it sit in her mouth for a second before swallowing. She hadn’t been drunk in so long; a glass with dinner and a second on special occasions but she hadn’t craved the feeling of intoxication since she’d left Madrid.

“Wanna talk about it?”

It felt like a betrayal. She felt like she was talking about him to her girlfriends like a teenager might. She couldn’t help herself. All she craved was a second opinion from somebody who would tell her she wasn’t overreacting. All she needed was to be reassured that she wasn’t going mad.

“He said he wished he’d never met me. That wasn’t what he was trying to say and he’s the kindest man on Earth, he’d _never_ try to hurt me but that’s not something I’m supposed to overlook. He said he thinks I’d be happier if he wasn’t in my life now.”

Tokyo rolled her eyes and for the first time in a week, Raquel felt like a normal person.

“He’s an idiot. He’s an absolute genius, but he’s an idiot too. Give him time to stew, he’ll come running back and apologise in the morning. Don’t let him ruin this time for you.” It wasn’t clear where the change of heart had come from, it made no sense at all to Raquel but she believed in it all the same.

They drank until there was no wine left and gossiped like teenage girls. Raquel wondered if there wasn’t a way that they could all stay together like this for the rest of their lives. She didn’t want it all to be over. She wasn’t ready to return to normality just yet.

“Why don’t you hate me anymore?” Raquel questioned as she rested her head against a heap of pillows.

“It wasn’t hatred. It was envy for the perfect life you had, that I would never have because I couldn’t force myself to love Rio. The way the Professor trusted in you was unlike anything I’d ever seen, I wanted that for myself,” Tokyo admitted timidly. “Plus, you were a cop and I didn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, but you proved yourself the second you refused to sell us out.”

Raquel had forgotten all about that moment in the barn. Before, she had imagined that a moment like that would bind itself to her memory and never leave her alone but she could barely recall it at all. She remembered Suarez’s gun pointed at her head and she remembered Sergio’s voice in her ear and that was about it. There was far greater trauma to replay over and over in her mind.

“They told me you’d all abandoned me and offered convincing evidence and I believed them. They told me that they would imprison my mother and my child if I didn’t sell you out and I believed that too. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Something was stopping me and only God knows what it was but I’m so glad that I didn’t. I’m so glad that I clung to what little faith I had left and waited. If I had, I’d never be able to look him in the eye again. Not him nor any of you.”

Tokyo was speechless. She had imagined the worst. She had envisioned Raquel enduring every torturous moment that Rio went through, but the endurance it would have taken to _lie._ It was beyond her own capabilities, to go through all of that and still have the presence of mind to lie.

It made her nauseous to think about all that pressure. It was a testament not only to her willpower but also to her faith, that she could be faced with proof she had been betrayed and still believe that she was doing the right thing.

She reached for Raquel’s hand and squeezed it tight. It made her chest heave to imagine it. The bones of her hand were prominent where she had been starved and Tokyo had to wonder how she was functioning so well.

They slept like that, hands entwined, all night. Tokyo tried to be attentive to every whimper, every twitch, but Raquel knew how to hide herself away inside her fear. She sat there in the darkness, eyes open, still to the point that her muscles ached with it, and she thought about life before Sergio.

 _No estaría más feliz_ , she thought decisively. She knew it for a fact but as she went through every corner turned and every choice made, her certainty grew. _No estaría más feliz contigo._ She rehearsed it in her head so many times that she forgot all other words but those. _No estaría más feliz contigo._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so i'm having a crisis because i'm thinking about lcdp way too much and i had a crackhead theory that raquel has been playing sergio since "estoy contigo" in the handcuffs and it's all some huge undercover ruse to catch him. i just keep picking up on little potential things that could be received that way and i know in my heart that i'm wrong and raquel would never ever do that but i just wanted you all to go through the next seven days of suffering with me on this

He rose long before the others and watched the sun come up over the horizon. Though the house boasted little luxury, the location was all they could have asked for. Out of the kitchen window, he could see the sandy coast and the high morning tide.

Breakfast wasn’t going to fix everything. He _knew_ that she would remain mad at him until they were back with Marivi and Paula who would both proceed to tell her she was being ridiculous until she started to believe it and forgave him just to shut them up. She wasn’t being ridiculous. She was absolutely justified in her frustration; Sergio was a fool.

Nevertheless, she would be less prone to murdering him if she was busy eating crepes. He put it off for as long as he could, setting out all of the ingredients in front of himself, measuring them each into small bowls, googling different recipes that might be better than his own. He heard movement from upstairs for the first time and decided he had waited long enough.

His crepes were one of his proudest accomplishments. It had taken months but he had finally figured out the perfect balance to assuage Raquel’s ‘too sweet’, Paula’s ‘not sweet enough’, and Marivi’s ‘ _estoy masticando neumáticos?’._ To cook without music made him antsy, he waited impatiently for each crepe to cook and looked for things to do instead of simply staring at the pan. To cook _with_ music and without Raquel however would’ve been even worse.

Sergio was not a dancer, not by any means. He indulged Raquel only in the hopes of catching a glimpse of that one smile where she squished her nose and crinkled her eyes and pulled her lips back tight over her gums. That smile which made his legs wobble. His mechanical hips were enough to make her laugh as she sidled up behind him and tried to guide him with her hands. It never worked. He never learned. 

“ _Profesor?_ ” Sergio flinched at the sudden noise and realised all at once that the crepe he had been cooking was burning, Stockholm was now in the kitchen with Cincinnati resting on her hip, and he’d almost set his sleeve on fire. “ _Esta todo bien?_ ”

He quickly tossed the ruined crepe into the rubbish and started to cook another before turning his attention to her. 

“Good morning, Stockholm,” The Professor greeted with a forced smile then softened slightly at the babe. “Hello, Cincinnati!” 

The little one gargled happily at him and reached out for his tie, grasping it between meaty fingers. Eventually, he lost interest and curled back into his mother’s side. 

“Crepes? What’s the special occasion? I thought we weren’t leaving until tomorrow afternoon,” Stockholm asked, pulling herself up carefully to sit atop the counter. 

Sergio looked down guiltily, focusing intently on the pan in the hopes it might create an excuse for his silence. No excuse came and so he gulped and looked up at the woman. 

“These, Stockholm, are apology pancakes.” 

She didn’t wait for an explanation before she started snapping at him about all that Lisbon had been through and everything she had done for him and how dare he upset her when she was only just beginning to process all that had happened to her. He didn’t shy away from it. There was nothing she could say to him that he hadn’t already thought. Instead, he listened to her as he began to stack crepes on to a plate. 

“What did you do?” 

He wondered where to start. He had yet to decide which exact phrase had been the worst but he thought that saying he wished he’d never met her was probably at the top of the leaderboard objectively speaking. 

“I may have, within a very specific context, said I wished I had never met her.” The words were barely out of his mouth when Stockholm smacked him hard on the shoulder. “I know, Stockholm, I know!”

The pair of them went through every detail of the conversation as he continued to cook crepe after crepe until the stack looked at risk of falling over. She had no pity for him. Denver was the same breed of idiot and still, they never learned. 

“We’re not just _tus mujeres,_ Professor,” “Lisbon has been dealing with this shit far longer than you have. She knew exactly what she was signing up for when she decided to join us and she was prepared. We are _robbers,_ just the same as you and Denver. We won’t play second fiddle to your macho masculinity complexes. _She_ is the only reason that we’re here right now, if she had done what any sane person would do, we would all be locked up getting electrocuted every five seconds by that fucking Sierra woman.” 

Sergio wanted to argue with her. He would’ve done the same for any of them. For Nairobi, or for Rio, or Helsinki, but he knew the difference. He didn’t need to have it spelled out for him. 

“How do I fix it?” 

He’d been wondering that for hours now. Apologies never went very well but he couldn’t wait for her anger to simmer, he’d _die_ waiting for that. Why had he decided crepes was the way forward? For the mastermind behind the greatest bank robbery in Spanish history, Sergio often wondered whether his Maker had forgotten to give him common sense.

“Have some faith in her,” Stockholm suggested, hoping down from the counter and swiping a crepe from the top of the stack to share with Cincinnati.Movement could be heard upstairs and he knew soon Raquel would descend with Tokyo as her personal bulldog. He knew there was a reason he’d been grateful the two never really got along; they were a deadly concoction of spirit. 

_She was the only one he had any faith at all in_. He was absolutely certain that the rest of the world would fall to dust but nothing could’ve broken her. There was nothing she wasn’t capable of doing. He only worried what she would do with all that power. _Please, don’t break my heart,_ he wanted to ask her. 


	5. Chapter 5

Raquel heard Cincinnati downstairs and decided she was ready to face Sergio so long as Stockholm was there with her. It made her nervous to think about facing him, they were so private in their affairs and there was simply no way that they could hide their feelings from the rest of the gang in this.

Downstairs, she found Denver humming _Bella Ciao_ to the baby and Stockholm making her way through a plate of crepes. Sergio wasn’t sitting at the table and she didn’t need to wonder why; her beloved was never good at keeping secrets from those he trusted. She knew that he had spoken to one or another of the pair, she only hoped it was from Monica that he had sought advice.

“ _Lisboa,_ ” Stockholm began and Raquel already knew she had been the one to hear Sergio’s woes. “ _Como estas? El Profesor cocino crepes._ ”

It was obvious what he was doing. There was no discretion in his attempts to regain her affections.

She wondered if he was ridiculous enough to believe he’d truly lost them. She was angry and she would continue to be angry until she saw Paula run into his arms and her heart was melted or until she was too impatient to wait for her own fury to dissipate and kissed him until she forgot what she was mad about.

The time had not yet come however, and so she sat and ate crepes and tried to hide her enjoyment. When Tokyo came downstairs, the atmosphere grew hostile and Sergio was made to feel entirely unwelcome at the table. He retreated upstairs and left them all to eat in peace and she found that despite her current feelings, still Raquel wanted to check on him.

Stockholm noticed the way she watched after him and couldn’t help but smirk.

“You really are incapable of being mad at him, aren’t you!” It was infuriating to know how obvious she was in her forgiveness. She wanted to allow herself the time to fully vent her emotions and yet the sight of him so disheartened was enough to melt her. “Let him stew a little longer, he deserves it.”

And he did. For his foolishness, he deserved to stew in his own self-pity for weeks and yet she couldn’t bring herself to punish him for loving her. That’s all he had done wrong; he had loved her too much and he had decided he knew better than she. He was wrong, but his intentions were as pure as they had always been.

All day, she sat alone and thought about him. Since the day they had reunited in Palawan, he had never put a toe out of line. He had given her everything she ever wanted and he had never done a thing wrong. It felt like this was the very first hurdle and she feared that she would stumble.

It wasn’t the first. She often forgot that but the first hurdle, the very first, was the greatest lie he had ever told her and how the truth of it had almost torn them apart. It still felt like a miracle that they had endured such a great trial and come stronger through it.

This moment was a testament to their love. Every moment _since_ that second in Hanoi when the truth had come out was a testament to them. In truth, it was why her anger never stuck: she could never be so mad at him again as she had been in that very second. She had been ready to kill him and such a thought could never cross her mind again.

One by one, they came to console her and each, in turn, was sent away. She had never needed them so much and yet she couldn’t bear to have them close to her. It needed to be over first and yet they all left tomorrow and she feared she’d never see them for the rest of her life. Raquel had never had to hope for something she wanted so little, and yet she forced herself to.

When Tokyo came, Raquel might’ve been persuaded to talk at last. She was sick of the sound of her own thoughts and she just wanted someone to speak sense to her but that wasn’t why Tokyo came.

“The Professor told me to get you to go down to the beach by any means possible. He implied some deception but I’m too tired to involve myself in his schemes and I know you’ll go anyway.”

Tokyo was right. She would go anyway. It was the one thing she knew for certain in this world: nothing in this world could make her stop loving Sergio Marquina. If he ran to the ends of the earth, she would chase him. No matter how her blood boiled, there was nothing he could do to escape her.

The thought crossed her mind often: would she have found him if she’d never checked the postcards? The chase would never end, of that she was sure. Raquel would look for him everyday for the rest of her life. She couldn’t stop if she had wanted to.

She made no effort to look nice, she had nobody to impress. Her hurt was on display for him to see, she wouldn’t protect him from it as he had tried so pointlessly to protect her. She went down to the beach in linen slacks and a tank top and waited for him to come and find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those who haven't seen the alleged spoiler and don't want to, look away: 
> 
> alvaro has said that there is a traitor amongst the gang's ranks and while i KNOW that it is rio, i also feel like the writers never fail to surprise us and it could be someone else entirely. i CANNOT wait for this season. six days, guys, six days!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to continue or not to continue? if you want more, or if you have ideas for where you'd like to see this go, leave a comment please. i don't want to say goodbye to this fic just yet. we have six days to endure.

She looked so incredibly impatient. She was turning to leave and head back up to the house when Sergio stepped into her periphery with an awkward smile.

“I know you’re angry, Raquel. I don’t blame you. I’m guilty of the greatest crime: I underestimated the woman that I fell in love with,” he opened and Raquel struggled not to laugh at the irony.

“You fell in love with me? Remember the first time you said those words, and the second and the third? Remember how the blood rose in your cheek against my slap. I’m giving you a chance to save yourself the sting here, Professor.”

He tried to overlook the sting of those words, of the estrangement she created with them. Raquel let him guide her along the beach and they walked as they argued. Somehow the movement made it easier to focus; Sergio wasn’t worried about catching her eye and losing track of his words.

“Professor?” Sergio’s dismay went untapped. “Inspectora, I thought we were more familiar but if you insist. Have you ever known true ecstasy? It’s hard to grasp but you’ve lived a wild life, I’m sure if anyone is familiar with feeling then it’s you.”

The way he slipped right into the role told him just how close he’d come to falling from grace. The heist had driven him to the end of his tether and he had been struggling to keep a hold of himself through each fresh moment.

“I know it well, and I know the despair of having it snatched away from you.”

Sergio wondered if she knew how she hurt him with such statements. He had only just got her back and now, here she was, reminding him of how his own foolishness had caused the loss of her. He blamed himself for her capture though it made little sense; she might’ve tried a different tree if they’d been less eager to split up, she might’ve acted differently if she’d had a clearer mind. A long list of hypotheticals that he would never figure out.

“You can beat me to a pulp if it will make you feel better but I fell in love with you, Raquel. I’m so in love with you and it’s the best thing in my life yet it feels like the most selfish.”

The tide was slowly wading out and he struggled to keep the presence of mind to hear her. She was so beautiful and the sand felt divine and he wondered when they would next get to see a view like this.

“They’re going to get on with their lives, Sergio. They’ll leaving and you’ll never see them again and still, you worry that you’re betraying the gang?” Raquel exclaimed and pulled him back into the present where he was faced once again with the inferiority he had ground into her. Much as she had wanted to be one of the gang, she had always been more and he had refused to acknowledge it. He wondered how he’d ever let her forget her own worth.

“Not them, Raquel, you. I know the danger my love puts you in and yet I can’t help myself,” he admitted and he knew he risked entering dangerous territory again. She was strong enough to bear whatever was set in her path but he longed for nothing more than the knowledge that she would never have to face such trials again.

Raquel stopped him in his tracks. She stood in front of him and forced him to look at her as she spoke: “Have I not proven myself to you yet? You were so reluctant to protect me from Alberto, so eager to assure me I was capable, but what? Your passion is too powerful.”

He fumbled with his words and mulled them over for so long that Raquel started to think she wasn’t going to get an answer at all.

“Raquel, every breath you draw exceeds my greatest expectations. It’s not you I doubt, it’s _them._ Their ethics, their humility. You’d spend your whole life in fear, wondering if you should’ve left me, for Paula’s sake, for your mother’s. I know the things they’ll do to you.”

 _The things they already did,_ he reminded himself _._ He’d yet to hear her stories of being held captive by the vicious Alicia Sierra. Still, somehow he knew that they were the product of his worst nightmares.

“Alicia told me that you’d abandoned me.” Sergio’s face was painted with confusion; he hadn’t considered the Inspector’s adeptness for mind games.“She played a voice recording of you, and there were moments when my head was pounding and my bones ached where I believed her. Every worldly force has tried to stop me loving you and failed. Sergio, you won’t stop me either.“

Sergio wanted nothing more to kiss her and to be done with it. He wanted to forget about his foolish words and let himself drown in her presence but nothing was settled.

He braced himself for the slap that she had promised and prayed that he wouldn’t stumble now.

“Raquel, I know you’re furious with me right now and I’m so sorry that I can’t articulate it to you. This isn’t what I’d planned, I had it all mapped out in my mind but there’s no better time than this. Marry me, Raquel Murillo,” Sergio almost pleaded, and Raquel’s hopeful expression was enough to make him continue as he dropped to a knee. “If I can’t stop you, then love me for the rest of our lives and let me love you. Let me give you the best life I can conjure, Raquel. Be my wife and we’ll run until we reach the world’s edge if we have to.”

His breaths became shallow as he looked up at her with all the patience in the world. He would’ve knelt there for a week if only she would say yes. The silence felt as though it lasted an age but with one quivering breath, it was ended.

_“Me casaré contigo, Sergio Marquina.”_


End file.
